H. Thompson Rich 44 min read

Baseball-sized orange meteors of unknown metal pelt Japan as Earth passes through the tail of a Mystery Comet, and from their shells bursts a swarm of huge, fiery ants to threaten the world.

H. Thompson Rich's 1931 Astounding story is a colorful first-contact and horror tale of alien invasion. Vivid, pulpy, fast-moving. Read it for a rousing period monster yarn where a professor's cannon-ray is all that stands between humanity and a brood of giant comet-spawned insects.

In its time

Published in 1931, during the 1930s, space opera soars.

Reading it

44 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).